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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

My laptop has an Atheros network card as I stated in the thread subject header and for some reason I am having issue that I do not know how to accurately diagnose.

I am running Slackware 14 which during the bootup sequence tries to start up the dhcp daemon which times out unable to connect however the network indicator light is blue which means activated. After logging in and using iwconfig the results confirm what the log said about the dhcp daemon that the wireless card is not receiving anything. Nothing i do on the command line will bring up the interface to fully operational. After starting X and checking KDE's network applet I find that there is not any network to be found. So I just have to hold down the network activation button and eventually i get a popup from kdewallet asking me for my pw for my network activation.

I think it might be hardware related however I am not sure. So my questions become how can i track down the problem and confirm if it is hardware or misconfiguration in the software.

I suspect your problems are all configuration. What have you done to configure your wireless interface?

If you have not installed WICD in /extras; ( on your install media ) I would recommend it.

This is what I use, and I find it much easier to configure wireless, and change settings depending where I am with my netbook.

You could also install Network Manager applet. I have seen several posts where some users like it over WICD. I had a lot of frustration with NM on another distro, started using WICD on Slack, and have never found a reason to use NM. Your choice here.

You do need to know some information on the access point you are trying to connect to. Usually you need the ESSID, and you need to know if encryption is used; and the type.

Something you can try, is in a terminal, run the command '/sbin/iwlist scan' ( without the quotes ) and see if you are seeing any access points.

If you see nothing, then you are either out of range, or have some more serious problems with the driver. I would guess you are using ath9k. It works well with most modern atheros cards.